Victims of Love
by Bruteaous
Summary: Collection of St. Trinian's drabbles named after songs. Contains multiple pairings: Kel/Belle, Andrea/Taylor, Zoe/Bianca and anhything else I think of. Some of the plotlines are tied together and some are totally unrelated.
1. The Red

**_Victims of Love_**

_**Disclaimer: **_I don't own the St. Trinian's franchise or any of its characters. I am just borrowing them here for a little while.

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><p><em><strong>The Red<strong>_

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><p>Kelly Jones started life in the red.<p>

She was already in debt in the womb; probably at conception too. There was no way she could've known, but a little warning for the hard luck life waiting for her would've been nice.

Fate was a treat, apparently.

Yasmin Jones had been underage when she decided that making money off of paying blokes was better than being forced to take it from her step-brothers all of the time and keep quiet about it at home. So it was that she hopped the dividing wall behind their Hounslow home and never looked back. Yasmin spent two days on the street before being judged attractive enough to get into a bawdy house in Soho's clubbing district after lying about her age.

She dealt with the usual tossers looking for a good time. The ponces with the vain girlfriends they would shag as soon as they were done with her, but wouldn't marry. Then there were the old wankers who looked out of place in their version of clubbing gear and the lads who weren't even old enough to drink looking for a memorable experience to brag to their mates about. It wasn't until her waistline began to strain against the skirts of her street-wear that Yasmin realized that she hadn't been as careful as she should've been.

Tracking down the bloke who did it would've been nearly impossible as would naming the kid—if it was a boy—after it's dad: Rick, Joe, Colin, Jon, Liam, Max, Dave, or Herman. Yasmin had kept it secret for as long as possible, trying some preventative measures along the way. Like taking too many pills with a fifth of vodka, but her heart just wasn't in it.

Somehow, somewhere, she wanted this baby. It would ruin her life, but it would be hers like nothing else. So one night, she left the brothel and took up serving in a Paddington pub. She was working a late shift the night the pains started, but didn't know who to go to for help. Her boss was already convinced she wasn't working fast enough and she didn't want to lose her job, but at the same time she needed to get to a place where she could have the kid in peace. Her frantic mind finally settled on a friend's flat not too far away.

Her water broke on the walk and halfway she doubled over at the pain of the contractions. In a strange twist of fate, Kelly Jones was born in Regent's Park at 22:15 in the evening. A man walking a dog discovered them and called emergency services.

By the time they arrived, Yasmin Jones had wandered back onto the streets leaving a small infant daughter swaddled in a corduroy jacket on a park bench.

Kelly Jones started life in the red.

Dependent upon the charity of others for her very survival. She was immediately entered into the system and adopted by a rather rich, philanthropic couple looking to have a second child. They soon found though that their second child wasn't what they had bargained for and shifted her back into the waiting arms of the government. Sometimes miracles happen. Sometimes it goes the other way.

Fate was a treat, apparently.

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><p><strong><em>Chevelle- The Red<em>**

**_Read and Review!~_**


	2. 1724

_**1724**_

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><p>Zoe was an unusual sort of sociopath. At least that was what some shrink had sold her parents on after she'd confessed that she tried to burn their house down because she thought the flames were beautiful.<p>

She, however, was of the opinion that she was just a shadowy soul born into a horrifically bright world. Even for an emo, Zoe had a particularly dark streak that most of her tribe members would come to recognize as something not to be tampered with. Hers was a brand of darkness that not even the bravest of girls would provoke on purpose. The first years—not knowing any better—had thought that whatever energy drove the girl would be unnatural enough to make Frankenstein sort miracles happen. It was her they had recruited to help them with reanimating a squirrel they found at the treeline.

When the rodent body twitched at the first touch of electrodes, everyone was excited. Little did they know it was just the gasses within the decomposing body getting ready to explode the carcass. Zoe was never summoned again to help with any of the first years' projects. The dark haired girl's reputation was born anew in that moment.

"Reckon she's a poltergeist?" Kelly ventured disinterestedly from around the faux campfire the upper sixth form had erected on the roof with a group of thick candles.

"That's some scary shite, that is," Taylor shivered, hanging on to the stick that held her marshmallow over the flames a little tighter.

"Nah, poltergeists can't take human form, not for extended periods of time at least," Andrea explained.

"_Rusalka,_" Anouska murmured from her seat next to Polly.

"What are you on about?" Taylor scrunched up her nose at the Russian as she took a deep draft from her Dovgan.

"Is dangerous she spirit," Anouska translated, wiping her lips. "She steals babies, drowns maidens, and eats good spirits."

Kelly leaned back on her elbows, "Sounds like a bunch of shite to me, Nous."

"Agreed," Polly nodded before mixing more rye into her drink.

"Well, must just be an unusual soul then," Andrea surmised.

"Sure you want to be leavin' your tribe to someone like 'er?" Taylor asked.

"She is old enough and most of the girls are afraid of her enough to respect her authority. She knows all of our recipes and rituals perfectly. Can't see why not," Andrea shrugged.

"Sounds like the perfect fit for the job," Kelly smirked.

"Whatever," Taylor groaned realising that she had left her marshmallow over the fire too long.

Zoe shifted in the open doorframe, listening as the conversation changed topics to the outside world and leaving St. Trinian's behind them. Her hazel eyes surveyed the dark blue sky and the constellations in her sightline. Zoe smiled as she thought about the coming year and all of the ways she was going to strengthen _her_ tribe. Appearing the role of the imposing and silent type had earned Zoe almost everything she'd wanted out of life: fear, respect, distance from sappy relationships, and best of all: a leadership position.

Maybe J.J. French had been right. It was all about making people see what you wanted them to see.

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><p><strong><em>1724- Sohodolls<em>**

**_Comments Anyone?_**


	3. A Kiss With A Fist

_Andrea/Taylor fic. Enjoy._

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><p><em><strong>A Kiss With A Fist<strong>_

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><p>Andrea tapped her fingers against her bedpost, a sure sign of complete utter frustration with the world as she watched Taylor from across the room.<p>

The chav leader was listening to her ipod very, very loudly while reading a magazine. The music—some Girls Aloud bullshit—floated unmistakably from the chav's headphones all the way into emo territory, the lyrics as clear as sunlight and just as painful.

Andrea tapped her fingers harder. Some of the other members of her tribe weren't bothering to hide their malcontent quite as much. Saffron was eying Taylor's pigtails as though she wanted to cut them off and hang them from the ceiling as proper trophies and Janie had pulled her hockey stick from underneath her bed.

Right, time to step in before the homicidal tendencies got to be too much for her girls. Andrea ceased the tapping and crossed the room to Taylor's bed. She didn't even bother with a verbal warning, but opted for simply pulling one of the chav's ear buds out from her ear. The simple movement caught the attention of Jess, whose bed was parallel to Taylor's and Bianca who slept on the opposite side. You could call a chav names. You could even insult their taste in bling on better days and get away with it, but no one messed with their music! It was an act of war pure and simple.

Taylor noticed the lack of tunes in one sound-saturated ear purely by practice alone and immediately shot up so she was level with Andrea, invading her space.

"Oi! What ya think you're doing messing with ma tunes?" Taylor shouted.

Andrea crossed her arms over her chest defensively and remained every bit the figure of calm as she stood her ground, "I wouldn't of had to mess with your tunes if you could have heard me shouting the last five times to turn them down."

"Oi! Makes no difference, you had no right messing with ma tunes!" Taylor reiterated, advancing towards the other girl with a sense of menace.

Andrea had expected a reaction like this. It was the reaction of someone who had a reputation and a tribal legacy to defend. Hell, Andrea had her own. Everyone knew that the emos weren't as quick to react as their chav rivals. Andrea wasn't as keen to start a fight as she was to end one and the same went for most of her minions. Excepting Saffron—whose aesthetic preferences and manic twists in mood tended to override her temper—and Janie whose sharpened hockey stick spoke for itself.

Incidentally, both underlings were just as keen for a fight as Jess and Bianca, what with removing their gold hoops and pushing their ponytails behind themselves in preparation. The dorm hung on tenterhooks as the faceoff commenced. Everyone else outside of the two tribes were sure that a full-scale war was going to spring out of this one. They'd all seen both emo and chav beat the life out of each other for less on a daily basis. It was just another rotation of the wheel in the cycle of aimless violence that St. Trinian's thrived upon. Couldn't change the natural order of things. Best to make some money off of it then.

Leontine—the first year bookie—was running from bed to bed, collecting odds and down payments on every possible outcome in her threadbare bowler hat.

"Fifty quid on Andrea!" Zoe exclaimed proudly, slapping the notes down in Leontine's hand hard enough to leave a mark.

"What have those worms finally eaten through to your brain? Taylor's gonna wipe the floor with her!" Bianca argued.

"Yeah? Why not put your money where your mouth is if you're so sure?" Zoe challenged, delighting in the way the rude girl's cheeks blazed red when she was enraged.

"Fine you Addams family reject! Just watch me, Leontine! Fifty on Taylor!"

"Fifty quid on Taylor!" Jess echoed as the first year bookie scurried to collect from the older girls before they changed their bets.

All the while this was going on, Andrea and Taylor didn't speak, didn't move, simply stared at each other in the barely existent breath of space that separated them. Their expressions were unreadable. Taylor's looked almost as peeved as ever except the anger didn't meet her dark eyes. Andrea didn't look bothered either way. She wasn't quite angry and she wasn't quite sad, but a mean cross between the two that made her insides feel like ice while the rest of her grew unusually warmer. It was a feeling that made an impression and the emo couldn't help thinking of all of the other times she'd felt this way…

The first time she'd set foot into Miss Fritton's stronghold of anarchy and met a small girl with dark Pipi Longstocking pigtails. That time in first year when Polly and Kelly decided that the cook didn't know shite about cooking and wired a small bomb into one of the ovens and Andrea and Taylor had both clung to each other as the explosion rocked the school. A flood of memories: Taylor stealing Andrea's ipod and programming it to play Miley Cyrus on repeat, Andrea switching Taylor's usual chewing gum with trick exploding gum, Taylor laughing, Taylor pissed off, Taylor hugging her after the success of the heist, Taylor drunk and hanging on her…all of it sent a shock of adrenaline and fear through Andrea that let her know that something stronger than hate was at work between them.

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><p><em><strong>Kiss With A Fist- Florence &amp; the Machine<strong>_

_**Reviews anyone? :]**_


	4. Bulletproof

_A Polly/Anouska fic, an odd pairing I know, but oh so satisfying. Dedicated to HotdogInAPineappleWorld. Enjoy! :]_

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><p><em><strong>Bulletproof<strong>_

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><p>It didn't matter what anyone said or what they did, they would never see her. Whether she was in a room full of people, it didn't change the score. They'd never see the <em>real<em> her. The internal her. The one that made all of the decisions; the one that felt all of the feelings.

The one that mattered.

Polly typed away at her computer, a figure of calm completely unbothered by the chaos of the dorms; by the mini-explosions going off in the first year crib with one of the more enthusiastic girls running around throwing mini-firecrackers against the floor or the almost constant bickering that seemed to be going on between her chav and emo neighbours or the members of her own tribe and the totties. Noise went in and out of her ears, the redhead paid no attention.

Instead, she was patiently waiting for something. That something came on the eve of a pair of stiletto heels. Kelly Jones sauntered into the crowded dorm and whistled for silence. When the bickering and the violence ground to a halt, Kelly knew she had everyone's attention.

"Oi, girls, lookout just spotted him making down the macadam like a madman!"

The head girl's revelation was met with cheers and a scurry of shuffling to get down the stairs and to the four-wheelers. Hobble the Ice Cream man was a time honoured tradition of the spring year at St. Trinian's and each and every girl took personal pride in taking to the dirt bikes and the quads and hounding the poor man out of his lorry while simultaneously making off with the ice cream and the cash from any sales.

"You coming, Pol?" Kelly asked when almost everyone had filtered out of the room but the quiet geek.

Polly shook her head mutely, but didn't look up from her screen. Kelly's smile fell, but when the redhead met her eyes it was with a cold stare that warned her friend that she wasn't in the mood for heart to hearts at the moment. The head girl took the cue and—making a mental note to see to it later—sauntered out of the dorm.

Polly took a deep breath and leaned back in her computer chair, removing her hands from the keyboard of her laptop and resting them on the desk. She honestly felt like she had been run over by a lorry twice. Her body ached. Her mouth was dry and she knew her emotional signs were all pointing toward clinical depression as a big part of the problem, but Polly couldn't be bothered to care about that right now.

The temperamental redhead had never been a self-conscious sort of girl. Polly had never worried about what her makeup or hair looked like because she wore makeup sparsely and her hair was always thrown up in voluminous pigtails that were more for necessity than for show. She'd always been happy with how she expressed herself to the outside world. She'd never doubted herself or her own decisions until lately. It had started this past week after the celebrations over the success of the Vermeer heist were winding to a close. Why the doubts chose then to surface, Polly wasn't any wiser than anyone else.

Never had she felt so entirely alone—so isolated from the other girls around her—so unsure of who she was and what that meant. This revelation also made Polly realize just how incredibly alone she was. It was almost laughable. At St. Trinian's not even the headmistress got away from prying eyes in her own bed. Surveillance systems that made the Houses of Parliament look unguarded ran from bow to stern of the grounds and were able to track GPS coordinates at least fifty kilometres on. Even so—Poly knew that seeing and knowing were two different things—and no one, not even Kelly Jones, her closest friend, really knew her. They saw her on a regular basis, but they didn't know her, not really. The person Polly was and the person she wanted to be—no one really cared to know those aspects of herself. All they cared about was could she make their criminal record disappear or could she get them in an out of a very dangerous situation without getting caught.

That was all that mattered to her classmates essentially: what she could do for them, not who she was on the inside. It was depressing.

Polly sighed and resettled her fingers over the keys. She knew what she had to be doing—hacking into Woolworth's mainframe and copy their recipes for the twin's latest business venture: Trinski flavoured candy—but for once, Polly just had no motivation for criminal endeavours.

And that was what was really disturbing about this whole bloody situation. Anarchy was in her blood. Her mother had been a St. Trinian and her aunt and her grandmother had all attended that school. Her own mother had even been the first leader of the geek tribe that came to fruition at the start of the information age in the late 70s/early 80s and they were the first to build their own master computer on the grounds. Her Aunt Bridget had given birth to the twin dynamos whom had risen this year to control the most primal tribe in the whole school for bollocks-sake! With Tania and Tara as her first cousins and a pedigree like hers, how was it that Polly all of the sudden didn't feel like causing mayhem in the civilized world? It just wasn't right.

The silent redhead looked down at the hands still hovering over her computer and turned them so the palms were facing her. Slowly, her eyes scrutinized the thin lines etched into the pale surfaces, wondering what it all meant.

"Who am I?" She thought out loud, "What's wrong with me? I've never second guessed myself before. Why start now?"

"Perhaps, now is the time for questions."

Polly nearly startled off of her chair at the unexpected accented voice coming from a distant corner of the room. She had thought she was alone. Never would she have even ventured into this realm of thought if she thought there was anyone else present.

The sombre Russian was sitting on the windowsill overlooking the front of the school. One leg was loosely crossed over the other, exposing her creamy smooth skin to the chill air as she took a long draught of vodka.

"Privet Polly," Anouska greeted after she'd swallowed the last of the alcohol. "Kak dela?"

The geek cleared her throat loudly and smoothed out her skirt, answering back in the foreign tongue with a practiced ease, "Spasiba, horošo. A u vas?"

Anouska set the empty fifth down on the floor calm as anything and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Somehow, I do not think you tell the truth about how you feel, Polly. Either that or your Russian is worse than Taylor's."

Red hot anger surged through Polly's chest, replacing the feelings of fear, resentment, and uncertainty that had been languishing there for the better part of a week. How dare Anouska compare her to the chav! Taylor wasn't daft—not the brightest crayon in the carton for certain—but her command of foreign languages was below even a nursery level. She still thought _Je t'adore _was a request to shut the door.

That was a blow too below the belt for Polly to ignore even if she had wanted to.

"I don't remember asking for your input, did I?" the geek growled, the low note in her voice sounding alien even to her own ears.

The Russian only shook her head slightly, unmoved, "You shouldn't ask a question if you don't want the answer."

"I didn't ask a question that needed an answer, I just said what I was thinking," Polly fumed, feeling like she was overreacting, but unable to stop the flood of feelings as they ebbed and changed inside of her making her feel scared, excited, and upset all at once.

Anouska stood, her heels clicking against the hardwood floor as she conquered the distance separating her from the geek. Once she was close enough, she leaned over Polly's shoulder and turned her head so she could stare into the redhead's eyes; now barely a breath apart. Blue looked into blue, feeling their differences and sameness in that one gaze, as though it were the whole world in small between them.

"When I was a girl, my father he took me to a village somewhere north of Kiev. It was not a good place to visit, especially not for a little girl, but my father he told me, 'you will learn here why I keep you close to me, why I protect you from everything'. I didn't know what to think."

Here Anouska paused, enjoying the awe of experience in Polly's eyes. She and the geek had never been close like Polly and Kelly, but they had spoken enough over the years to understand one another as solitary, single minded beings who enjoyed their privacy too much to prattle on about their lives to others. And yet here the Russian was, confiding in the stoic redhead something she hadn't breathed to another living soul.

"We met with one of my father's friends and watched and waited as two of his workers escorted a group of young girls onto a lorry. Not one resisted. Then my father he turned to me and he said, 'These girls are being taken to other countries where they will be whores. They think they are being taken to Minsk to work good jobs. I do not expect any of them to live past thirty. You see, if I had stayed in this village, _Angel moy_, you would have been one of those girls'."

Polly gasped, the sound a foreign one to her. Anouska could read the sadness and horror vying for dominance in the geek's eyes, being careful to keep her own expression as neutral as possible. For some reason, the Russian was moved by the redhead's own reaction more than the memory of her own experiences. Life was hard, growing up in Russia as a girl had taught her that before her family moved to London, city of capitalists and opportunity. To Anouska, visiting the little village her father had come from was just another day in her life. Nothing more, nothing important. But in Polly's eyes she saw the emotions that day had inspired in her as a child: fear, compassion, and horror at a world where human life mattered less than paper money.

Polly was no fool. She knew more than most school girls about how the criminal world ran itself, but even she seemed to feel sick to her stomach at the thought.

Anouska leaned in a bit closer so that their faces were almost touching and the Polly held her breath.

"You are wonderful, Polly. You have talent to do anything you wish and most of all you are lucky. What you worry about who you are, what is wrong with you, it doesn't matter. Perhaps, you feel you need to ask those questions, but to me you will always be beautiful, complicated, capable. Your outside is merely a mirror of the inside. Never doubt yourself again, _MIlaya Moyna_, or I will have to find a way to convince you of your own worth."

Anouska leaned forward so that the last sentence was whispered in the geek's ear. The red head shuddered and was startled when Anouska's lips briefly settled over her cheek, pausing only briefly before she pulled back. Polly just stared into the Russian's blue eyes, light blue staring into grey-blue in a position neither were ready to relinquish just yet.

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><p><em><strong>Bulletproof—La roux <strong>_

**Odd sort of set up for Polly, self-doubt. This idea with the song originally came up for the character of Bianca, but when I got into it, the writing wasn't working so I shifted gears to Polly and the idea became loads more interesting. Hope everyone enjoyed it! :]**


	5. Protege Moi

_No real pairing here. This is very simply a drabble. Enjoy._

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><p><em><strong>Protégé Moi<strong>_

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><p>Even for an emo, Zoe had a particularly dark streak.<p>

It was a mystery sometimes to Kelly even how Andrea—mostly soft spoken, non-combative though not a push over Andrea—managed to keep her place as leader of the emo tribe with someone like Zoe around, but so far aside from leading her tribe's war of attrition against the chavs, the shadily spirited girl kept mostly to herself. She wasn't ambitious in the way that Bianca, one of the minor chavs was, and Andrea didn't have to waste useful energy trying to rein in Zoe's constant rebellions like Taylor had to do constantly with Bianca. However, there was a seething energy beneath the dark haired girl's indifferent demeanor that said that she could end you if she wanted to and give you hell in the afterlife beyond if you pissed her off enough.

"Not my fault you can't keep your hands to yourself, innit?" Taylor shouted in Bianca's face, standing on her tiptoes to reach her.

Bianca rested her hands on her hips and stood her ground, "Whatever, I didn't nick your chew! Bet it was one of the corpse bride's maggots what did it."

"Oi!" Jess pitched in her bit, "Yeah, it was probably one of 'em! Corpse-shagging freaks!"

"You don't know what you're talking about, you bedazzled bint!" Janie—the most aggressively violent of the younger emos—came to her tribe's defense immediately.

Kelly leaned her back against the wall to the large attic space that constituted the dorms over the west wing, listening as the latest fight in the everyday civil war between chav and emo wound itself up. Over in their crib, the first and second years were already furiously laying odds and taking bets on which tribe would win in the fight everyone could feel coming on like an oncoming storm.

Not too far from the sulking head girl, Andrea lay on her bed, not at all bothered by the complaints.

She, like Celia, was one of the few who knew that if you gave into anger it would indeed conquer you. Though she did have a bit of a temper at times, Andrea managed to hold out against the easily shifting winds of the chavs' anger during most fights, only provoking or taking shit from Taylor when she was in the mood or when it was necessary. Now was not one of those times, but the girls of her tribe were beginning to feel the burn of the chavs' allegations from across the room and if they didn't sort it out themselves soon something ugly was sure to erupt between the two rival factions.

Then the conflict took an unexpected turn. Taylor eyed the emos entering the fray as Janie and Jessica got into an all-out shouting match, then noticed Andrea calmly laying on her bed. If her greatest rival wasn't coming to the defense of her own, it could only mean one thing: she knew her girls were innocent and no amount of shouting down Taylor's wing girls was going to prove it.

"Oi!" Her loud voice cut through the escalating arguments, "If Morticia ain't bothered, then I ain't worried about 'em yet, but I am worried about you lot! It ain't that nocturnal lot wot love to chew!"

At this point, Taylor was completely beyond raving frustration and was frantically searching the nightstands in the chavs' corner of the dorms. Now instead of trying to convince their leader that the emos were behind the disappearance of her beloved chocolate, strawberry-banana flavored chewing gum, Bianca, Jess, and the other chavs were desperately bickering with Taylor, trying to keep her away from their stuff. The situation looked like it might actually be winding down to an internal conflict when Taylor stopped searching after fifteen minutes and surveyed all of the girls in her territory.

Then along came Zoe…

She passed easily through the chavs' space and into the dorm like a dark cloud moving over water.

"All that glitter finally seep into your brain, chav?" Zoe remarked as she passed by Taylor, a mocking stare leveled in the chav leader's direction as she entered her tribe's borders.

Taylor's blood was boiling before the sentence was even out of the emo's mouth, "What did you say?"

The other chavs—glad to have a distraction from fighting their leader's accusations—came to Taylor's aid. Bianca in particular put herself wholeheartedly into the fray.

The taller girl had always had a bone to pick with Zoe. Since they had both come to the school as first years, they had cemented a bond of lifelong animosity when Bianca had decided that the black haired girl's luggage could use a little bit more color and had bedazzled it in a full spread of pink and gold beads. Revenge came that same day when Zoe had decided to set fire to the chav's frilly pink bedclothes…while she was in them. The rest was history.

"You heard me or are your ears so deadened from your tasteless music that you can't hear proper?" Zoe hissed in a low voice.

Taylor crossed her arms over her chest, steeling her temper. Zoe was an agitator. All and all, 99.5% of fights between the two rival tribes began or ended with her. Insulted or not Taylor wasn't bothered enough by Zoe's jibes to take the bait and attack her, but Bianca was more keen to rush into the heat of battle than her leader (at least against Zoe).

"Oi! You looking to start something, bride of Chuckie?" Bianca pushed the sleeves of her track jacket up, ready for a fight.

Zoe smirked, accepting the challenge, "I thought that would've been obvious, chav. Guess you're not as bright as I gave you credit for."

Andrea sat up just as Zoe threw down the proverbial gauntlet, Bianca taking the cue and lunging for her.

Now was a good time to get involved if ever, before the coming typhoon Zoe and Bianca destroyed the dorms. Fortunately, Kelly had the same idea. Bianca had Zoe in a half-nelson headlock when the head girl pushed away from the wall and sauntered over to the ring of excited girls surrounding the pair. Zoe kicked Bianca in the knee and the taller girl went down with a groan, taking the swarthy emo with her. The two rolled from side to side, wrestling for dominance before Bianca finally rolled Zoe onto her back and pinned her to the floor, using her whole body for leverage. The rude girl's longer limbs gave her the added 'oomph' she needed to drive all of her points home while the naturally smaller, but more feisty emo put up the fight of her life on the other side.

The posh totties looked up briefly from their make-up mirrors, Polly noted Zoe land a swift kick to Bianca's middle which allowed her more room to squirm over the rim of her glasses, and Harriet paused in making a quick correction to one of her algorithms before the whole room moved onto more important things than the two squabbling rivals. Everyone save for Kelly. It was her job to make sure the two didn't kill one another. Maiming, biting, gouging, scratching, and stabbing were all fair game, but death was where the head girl drew the line.

So far, Bianca and Zoe had only come close to killing one another, but for all of their violence and sporadically armed combat, they hadn't inflicted injuries any worse than severe bruising and occasional scratches or cuts. That in and of itself was miraculous, being that Bianca had been pushed and punched around by her prize fighter father in Brixton for as long as she could walk and Zoe was a she-demon with a knife who had learned how to use it in a Manchester orphanage. Both girls were natural spoilers for a fight and both girls also never gave up in a scrap.

Kelly wasn't sure if she should intervene or not. Second guessing herself had never been her style, but it was hard to know with these two whether pulling them apart would make a situation worse or better.

Zoe—in an impressive feat of gymnastics—threw Bianca off of her using only her legs, ending Kelly's inner battle with herself. No further action seemed necessary as both parties righted themselves and locked gazes, charging the air separating the two rivals from utter extinction or utter bliss.

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><p><em><strong>Protégé moi—Placebo. Drop a review please if you like my work and would like to see me write more. :]<strong>_


	6. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake

_Another Zoe/Bianca fic. I can't seem to get away from this pair no matter how hard I try. XD For MustardForYourHotdog and HotDoginaPineappleWorld (who I know is still out there somewhere). Your hilarious and well written stories have gotten me through a bad patch in my own summer. I hope this entertains you both as much as your stories have me. As for everyone else, read and enjoy!_

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><p><em><strong>Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake<strong>_

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><p>Zoe and Bianca were thirteen when they had the first argument they could categorize as meaningful.<p>

"Arsenic or cyanide?" Zoe asked from her upside down perch hanging from one of the beams in the school's attic.

"What's the difference, they both kill ya don't they?" Bianca asked, perturbed with a nasty hangnail as she filed away at it with a metal file.

"Of course they do, you tit!" Zoe said, righting herself with the surprising skill of a lemur and dropping down to the floor, "but there are subtle differences in _how_ they kill you."

The offending nail removed, Bianca crossed her arms behind her head and leaned back against the attic space's only boarded up window. The two had been caught individually in the act of sabotaging the new English teacher's room after Bianca had been publically tormented for her horrible grasp of grammar at the day's lesson and Zoe had been "asked nicely" not to ever bring a fire axe into the classroom again. Since their capture and arraignment by Miss Fritton, the chavs and emos had taken it upon themselves to ban together and complete the task Zoe and Bianca had been unable to finish. Now, serving an hour in isolation, both were trying to whittle away the minutes without killing each other.

"Well, I don't see why it matters so long as ya wind up dead."

"Would you want to be drooling all over the floor and foaming from the mouth like a mad dog?" Zoe sighed angrily.

"No! Ya weirdo," Bianca said, trying to get more comfortable on the windowsill but there is only so much a girl can do with 30 year old hardwood for a cushion.

"Then the differences should bloody well matter to you!" Zoe said, sitting Indian style on the floor.

"Well, I don't plan on offing myself anytime soon, do I? So why should I care?"

"Because you might off yourself by accident if you don't know how to detect poison in your food and drink. Do you catch my drift?"

Bianca's eyes widened then she glared down at the swarthy emo on the floor.

"You wouldn't dare," the rude girl growled.

"Not me tit!" Zoe growled just as intensely, "why would I be telling you about it if I was going to do it, eh? I am just saying in a place like this where any first year will try to kill you for a fiver it is a good idea to know your poisons, you know?"

Bianca actually hunched forward and gave that idea serious thought.

"I will never say this again, but you've got yerself a point," Bianca conceded grudgingly.

"Course I do, cause I'm not you," Zoe sneered, content to have the first of many last words.

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><p>The second argument that meant anything to either party came three years later—after the start of the school year and the FrittonShakespeare fiasco. The party the night before had been a mosh pit of alcohol, merry making, dancing, singing, and some slight heavy petting in areas. All and all nearly the entire school population had ended up plastered somewhere in the building. Even first years had passed out in droves, little bodies estranged at odd intervals on the stairwell and in the lobby, face down and drooling onto the carpeted stairs and hardwood floors.

Beverly and Miss Fritton, both very experienced in these matters, were able to amble through the halls over the obstacles of limp drunken forms as easily as if they were playing hopscotch on a playground. Not even Annabelle or Matron, both of whom had the common decency to pass out in their own rooms. Hardly anyone else was up and moving. Zoe was the exception. She had of course indulged in more than her fair share of trinski shots last night, but the difference between her and her classmates stood not in tolerance, but in moderation.

An emo down for the count was an emo bound for an ambush and Zoe was never one to let her guard down. She had taken a quick nap on the roof with her back to the door so someone wouldn't be able to sneak up on her without her knowing and had awoken with the sun. The moon and stars hadn't been completely gone by then only receding gradually with the darkness. A lifelong fan of darkness, Zoe had climbed up the pipes to the small roof above the doorway and laid back against the tiles, watching the one visible planet and constellations slowly fade into color. It wasn't like they were really going anywhere, she knew, but it seemed like the stars were disappearing into a completely different world.

As a child, Zoe had actually been told that by her mother. That the stars went to sleep during the day so they could come out again at night. She had believed it too. So much so that Zoe had dedicated her first ten years of life to being out with the stars since she thought the sun was too bright and offensive. Who wanted to be in the same place with something that could blind you with a glance? It was annoying and unnecessary.

Zoe had eventually applied this same view to life on the grander scale.

Anything bright and shiny became a personal affront to who and what she was and therefore had to be done away with by any means possible. This world view had always presented a problem for other people. First, were Zoe's parents.

They had started to worry when at four their only daughter would pull the drapes on her windows shut and play with puzzle pieces and building blocks in darkness. At six, they received a call from the principle of Zoe's primary school on the first day of school demanding their presence after their daughter had taken playtime to a whole new level by shooting out the fluorescent lights of the Year 2 classroom with a slingshot assembled during story time and some marbles. From then on, Zoe had been taken out of school entirely and tutored at home. The only outings aloud weren't for play dates to other children's houses, but to a child development specialist in the city who was known for being unafraid to tackle hard luck cases. He had insisted that Zoe's aversion to light was curable and—arrogant and unsuspecting sod that he was—he had devoted himself to the task.

After three months, the poor man formally resigned from his job after an exercise with a candle designed to slowly build Zoe's tolerance to light had cost him his eyebrows, eyelashes, and most of the skin on his face. Eventually, the burden had become too much and Zoe's parents had decided to move to a different city and start over…without their daughter. They had packed in the night while Zoe was studying and had left the house after she'd fallen asleep that morning. She hadn't realized they were gone at first. The Skolnik household had always been a quiet one and the lack of noise wasn't enough to convince Zoe that anything had changed, but by evening with no meals being prepared and neither parent in sight Zoe knew she was alone.

Abandoned. Neglected and left to starve.

Neighbors had eventually found the dirty and skeletal ten year old after the house began to smell strongly of refuse and the rubbish hadn't been put out for the bin lorry after four weeks. The parents had never been located and Zoe's care reverted to the state. With no school that would take her that was how Zoe had eventually come to the attention of Miss Fritton and the rest was history.

Zoe sat up, the stars had mostly gone and nothing remained of the night, slim purple swath over the western horizon. Over the years, necessity of daily life had tempered Zoe's hatred of the sun, but it still wasn't her favorite thing. She heard the door beneath her creak open and shut as someone else walked out onto the roof. Zoe checked her phone.

It was 8:30 in the morning. After a party like last night, no one else should have been awake and yet here was Bianca walking steadily toward the roof edge.

The rude girl was in the rumpled clothes she had been wearing last night as her dark hair was more disheveled than Bianca's vanity would usually let it get away with in public. She looked…tired and worn out as if someone had somehow come along and tied her to a block of concrete and made her pull it around the school all night. From her perch, Zoe couldn't discern any rips in the rude girl's clothing or any physical signs of a struggle so she figured that hadn't actually happened, but it was still a pretty good analogy for how Bianca looked right about now. On some level, Zoe had always enjoyed the sufferings of others. It reaffirmed her view that there _were_ people out there who were more screwed up and maltreated than she was and that was comforting.

However, seeing her oldest rival like this somehow…just wasn't. It wasn't comforting like it ought to have been. It was disturbing instead. What did that say about her? That Zoe was more screwed up that she had originally thought she was or was there a little bit of humanity peeking through the darkness in her soul?

Bianca stopped walking once she reached the edge of the roof and sat down on the cold stone lip overlooking the school grounds. From there nearly the whole ten acres were visible, from the start of the drive to the woods concealing the fenced in border surrounding it all. The sight had often filled St. Trinian's girls' hearts with pride and the humility of knowing that without this place neither the girls nor their beloved anarchy would be able to exist as they were in a world full of order and conservative fuddy-duddies. However, at this one moment, Bianca couldn't give a foul fart whether the whole place burned to the ground with her in it. She was more distraught than she could ever remember being and her world and everything in it at once seemed dull and not worth keeping.

Her brooding was interrupted when she heard footsteps not even attempting to sneak up on her.

"You look like shit. Not just normal shit," Zoe felt the need to elaborate, sitting beside Bianca on the ledge, "but the kind someone gets after too much curry: yellowish, runny, and defeated."

Bianca turned around, briefly disgusted out of her grief, "Ew! What's wrong with ya? Ya psycho!"

"Nothing beyond the obvious," Zoe shrugged. "What's wrong with you?"

"None of yer fuckin'business, yeah? So fuck off." Bianca said, swiping at her running mascara with the sleeve of her track jacket.

Zoe had made tormenting Bianca her favorite pastime for the past six years so she knew exactly what amount of brutal force it took to make the other girl cry and so far nothing short of a broken arm had managed to coax tears out of the stubborn rude girl, but here she was…tearing up and no one was hurting her, not physically anyway.

"Chav—" Zoe began.

"We're rude girls!" Bianca corrected.

"Like I said, Chav, you and me, we've always had a special relationship based on mutual hatred and revenge," Zoe grudgingly continued. She had never been a talker. Someone who was good with her words, yes, but a talker no so this sort of thing was new to her. "We've always been able to co-exist based on that so since we are sort of in this together, why don't you just tell me what's got your bollocks in a vice before I have to beat it out of you?"

Bianca's answer was more along the lines of what Zoe was used to, as the taller girl launched herself at Zoe and knocked them both back onto the concrete floor of the roof hard enough to push the air from both of their lungs. Bianca recovered quickly and sent a volley of half-hearted, vicious punches aimed at her rival's solar plexus, tears streaming down her cheeks with each blow. Zoe raised her arms and used them to shield her from Bianca's fists, but they only managed to stop a fourth of the punches. The assault didn't last very long, however, as the girl above her was falling apart before Zoe's eyes. The emo reached out and caught both of Bianca's fists without much effort. The rude girl didn't even try to pull them away, she just slumped forward, her head bowed so that Zoe could only see her forehead as Bianca shuddered and sobbed like no one had ever seen her do before in her life.

The sight put a fear Zoe had never even known into her and she all of the sudden felt like tearing up herself, more out of distress than actual sadness.

"That stupid idiot!" Bianca sputtered breathlessly between sobs, "The stupid man! I told him—I told him go into the doc—I fuckin' said and he didn't listen and now he's gone!"

"Who?" Zoe asked quietly, pushing them both up into sitting positions.

"My dad, you fuckin' tit! You bloody daft fuckin' tit!" Bianca yelled, punching blindly and falling over on her side. After she had cried for a few more minutes, her sobs quieted to hiccups and she began to talk, "He had a bad heart. Always knew it, we both did, but after mum died there was nothing and no one wot could get him to a hospital again and now I'm nobody's daughter anymore. The fuckin'git! I'm nobody's little girl anymore."

Zoe didn't know what possessed her, but she reached out and enveloped Bianca in a tight embrace. The rude girl tried to fight at first, but her usual strength wasn't with her and she couldn't fight the strong arms trying to comfort her. Bianca's sobs renewed themselves and Zoe was astonished to find that the other girl's loss had moved her to tears. So much for those child psychiatrists who had told her she was a sociopath without a heart. Wish the bastards could have seen her now, sobbing again like the child who had spent a day waiting for parents to come home and never did. Loss was like a bowl of asparagus—it was an acquired taste that everyone had to get used to but no one had to like—and on this morning, both Bianca and Zoe were dealing with a dish always served cold. They had no one to help themselves, but each other and though they would never admit it that was how the emo and the rude girl liked it.

After twenty minutes, Bianca's eyes were too dry to form tears anymore and only her body shook with the reverberations of grief. One part of her life had fallen away a little sooner than it would for others and she was overcompensating physically. Zoe was still crying. Crying not so much for the lost life of a man she had never met, but for the child in her that had never been mourned properly. Zoe had protected the orphan inside of her with coarse inhuman layers cultivated over the years like a matryoshka doll, but now they were beginning to fall away like snake skin leaving her vulnerable and grieving in the embrace of an enemy. Never would either girl have imagined a scenario like this one and never after would they speak to others about it, but the feelings of hatred they had always harbored for one another finally passed away along with their grief into a mutual understanding of what it felt like to be supported and cared about.

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><p><strong><em>Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake—Zola Jesus<em>**

**_Please Review. They might seem like a pain, but the reviews give me ideas and keep my writing going. Thank you. :]_**


	7. I Dreamed a Dream

_**Short Belle/Kel fic. **_

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><p><em><strong>I Dreamed a Dream<strong>_

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><p>Annabelle snuggled closer into the sleeping body next to her, inhaling the unique scent of perfume and sex that permeated her nights with Kelly Jones and sometimes made her feel like she was a completely different person than when she was on her own. The pale skin beneath her cheek was thrumming with heat and a relaxed circulatory cadence that suggested the infamous head girl was still somewhere is dreamland, despite the fact that she could hear otherwise soundless footsteps sneaking around in the noisy dorm outside her room and could drop and roll at the sound of a grenade pin hitting the floorboards. Annabelle took a deep breath and shifted her position so that her chin rested on the head girl's collarbone.<p>

Her honey brown eyes traced the contour of the ashen neck, high cheekbones, and slightly parted lips still stained a ruby red either from the remaining lipstick Kelly has been too distracted to bother removing or the pleasurable sting of last night's kisses not a few inches away from Belle's own face. The mascara around Kelly's eyes had yet to wear off and her black bob was askance at odd angles against the pillows. In moments like this it was hard to believe that such simple, imperfect beauty was Annabelle's to have and no one else's. That for some unfathomable reason, she had been given this gift that no one was privy to and it had become something that no one else could challenge or take away from her. Annabelle felt safe and protected like she'd never felt before. Kelly didn't even have to be touching her. Just being in the same room with the head girl made Annabelle feel like there wasn't any other place in the world where she belonged. In Kelly's arms, Annabelle was home.

Just then, Kelly's long muscles twitched and she stretched beneath the sheets, curling more tightly against Annabelle's side. After a few silent seconds, Kelly opened her eyes and focused on Annabelle's face and she smiled.

"Fancy something you see?" the deep voice, melted through the distance between them.

"Nothing I can't have," Annabelle said.

"Sure about that, love?" Kelly asked, reaching for her and rolling them so that Annabelle was laying on top of her.

"Depends, I suppose. Are you planning on denying me anytime soon?"

"Never," Kelly whispered, kissing Annabelle briefly, then repositioning them back against the pillows as Annabelle rested her head in the crook of Kelly's neck.

They lay peacefully entwined within the web of one another's limbs, not aware where one body ended and the other one began and not caring to know either. The waking world of St. Trinian's was coming alive around them at its own pace. Out just beyond the head girl's door, the first year's crib was already alive with activity. The Twins always set up some sort of diabolical prank for whatever girl might be causing them trouble. Yesterday it was troweling concrete into the bottom of Esmeralda's trainers so that when she stuck her stocking feet into them, she wouldn't be able to move. This morning—from the slight explosion and the high pitched scream—Annabelle had deduced that the Sopranos had turned to their favourite instrument of torture: homemade C4.

Beyond the first years, Annabelle could hear the daily battle in the war of attrition between chav and emo beginning to wind up as Taylor's high pitched use of mutilated grammar floated through the head girl's door. Everything was just as it should be.

"_Oi! You're gonna pay for that Vampira! Those were Nike!" _

Annabelle jerked awake. Once her muddled consciousness figured out who and where she was, the next task was to figure out when. The newly minted head girl propped herself up onto her elbows and observed the cold, empty space on the double bed beside her and remembered that it was the beginning of the fall term and Kelly Jones was gone and out of her life forever. And what was worse: Kelly had chosen to go. Kelly had chosen to leave Annabelle behind and go on with her life. Annabelle didn't know where the other head girl was or even if she was alright because they hadn't been on speaking terms since the spring term had ended in June. Annabelle honestly didn't know what had happened. Her relationship with Kelly Jones had unravelled almost as quickly and explosively as it had begun. Why? Annabelle still wasn't sure how it had happened, but the frequent arguments were a good indication of when things had started going south.

Both head girls were natural born leaders and very stubborn and headstrong. In their occupations watching over the many tribes of the school and making sure that they didn't end one another, these traits came in useful, but when matched together they could prove dangerous. And they had. It wasn't a question of love. Kelly had been Annabelle's first love and vice versa and they had been head over heels for one another. However, it was the simple truth that once all of the flashy tinsel and bright things were stripped away, love wasn't enough on its own to keep two people like them together for long.

It was early in the autumn term yet and not much had happened. The new girls were still getting used to the lay of the land and very few of them acknowledged Annabelle Fritton as the leader she knew herself to be, but if Auntie's little side bets with Matron had any chance of turning a profit then the girls of St. Trinian's would know their new head girl's calibre soon enough.

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><p><em><strong>I Dreamed a Dream—Les Miserables <strong>_

Short, but not so sweet. Leave a review on your way out and I hope everyone enjoyed it. :)


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